a blog about perfume

My fragrance is inspired by the night air of Dubai. Driving during the night in the city with the stars above, the warm desert air scented with the Oud that ceremoniously burns, caresses your skin.

This quote is from the PR materials accompanying my sample of Shalini Jardin Nocturne. Right now, I’m about as far from a Dubai night as you can get. I can’t drive anywhere, let alone in Dubai, because my 31-year-old pickup truck is in the shop. I live in the soggy Pacific Northwest, not a desert, and the only thing ceremoniously burning might be my toast…

Helmut Lang’s perfumes (originally issued in the early 2000s) are often described as “cult” fragrances. I never tried the perfumes when they made their debuts so my reviews will tackle today’s re-release formulas.

Cuiron

Cuiron is a sheer leather fragrance, a combination of muskiness and salty/aquatic leather — imitation ambergris? Though Cuiron feels light, it has good tenacity and casts a wide net upon initial application…

With «KenzoAir», man has accepted his feminine side and retained something of the little boy that he once was. For me, there is no such thing as a fragrance for men or a fragrance for women.

«Insolence» for Guerlain would not have been the same if it were made for another brand. Culture comes into play. It's a controlled insolence, which is positioned in the fruity family.

This [24, Faubourg], for me, is the last great classic. It represents all the elegance of Hermès. It's a distinguished woman whose femininity is expressed in an amber base. This fragrance took 5 years to develop.

This [DKNY Be Delicious] is the most extroverted of all my fragrances. It's romance in New York, with a floral structure to give it a form of originality and modernism.